ALEX COHEN, host:
Bernard Madoff, UBS, Robert Allan Stanford: A number of financial titans are dealing with huge ethical breaches, breaches that happened even though there are people charged with making sure companies abide by the law, a practice known as compliance. From New York, Diantha Parker reports on new efforts to make sure companies are acting both lawfully and ethically.
DIANTHA PARKER: On a recent evening, rush-hour time in Midtown Manhattan, Joel Kirsch is still 56 floors up in a conference rooms, leafing through a thick book the size of a box crackers.
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PARKER: Kirsch is the U.S. chief of compliance for Siemens, and the books holds about two years worth of courts documents. In December, the German engineering company had to pay nearly a billion dollars in fines and restitution for bribing government officials worldwide in exchange for doing business in their respective countries. Kirsch says in 2006, when prosecutors began their investigations, Siemens started overhauling its compliance department. It's grown from 100 to more than 600 full-time employees, and focuses on what's called tone from the top.
Mr. JOEL KIRSCH: (Chief Compliance Officer, U.S. Operations, Siemens): Employees react very positively when their managers talk about ethical business and they talk about the right way to do business. So, we have programs through which we can send the right messages. It's through the Internet, and it's through newsletters that we send out; it's through a very extensive training program; it's through town-hall meetings that we conduct. So, we try, in many different mediums, to get that message to our employees.
PARKER: There are organizations that monitor and rework this kind of effort. The Ethisphere Institute is nonprofit think tank that picks an annual list of the world most ethical companies. Ethisphere founder Alex Brigham says it's not always easy for a large corporation to get ethics right. He says about 90 percent of us know right from wrong, but in a business setting, people often ignore their internal compasses.
Mr. ALEXANDER J. BRIGHAM (Founder and Executive Director, Ethisphere Institute): That can oftentimes be due to the culture of an organization, and they feel pressure financially or from their leadership, or incentives are misaligned. So, it's much more profitable and lower risk for them in the short-term to do the wrong thing.
PARKER: Rather than be a nonprofit scold, Brigham says Ethisphere offers a set of standards companies can use as benchmarks. To be voted among the most ethical, businesses have to fill out a detailed survey. Criteria include investment and innovation and a corporation's engagement with the communities that affects and serves. 2008 winners included PepsiCo, Honda and Wal-Mart. But sometimes ethical improvement means bringing in outside help. Steve Priest's consulting firm is called the Ethical Leadership Group. He says most companies now know they need more than legal window dressing.
Mr. STEVE PRIEST (President, Ethical Leadership Group): Compliance with the law only gets you so far. I mean, I don't think anybody is going to want as their epitaph on the tombstone, you know, she was compliant.
PARKER: Priest says a truly ethical company is one where employees feel they can speak up, where business is done transparently, and where gut instinct is valued. He says when in doubt about whether something's ethical, look close to home.
Mr. PRIEST: Mortgage practices and the leverage standards over the last few years, trying to defend that to my mother, it just wouldn't have played, wouldn't play in Peoria.
PARKER: Priest and Alex Brigham say a light bulb goes off for businesses when they see their ethical counterparts are doing well. Brigham says the more ethical your business the lower your risk, and that stability makes you a place where consumers are willing to spend their money. For NPR News, I'm Diantha Parker in New York.
COHEN: The financial meltdown is a story we talk about all the time on the radio, but how do you capture the economic crisis if you're a photographer?
Mr. ANTHONY SUAU (Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photojournalist): Of course, you can go to Wall Street and Washington, D.C., but then to get out into the communities where people are really having difficulties and the mortgage crisis can be seen from a very human level, that's where it became very dramatic. When I went to Cleveland, it was immediately clear to me that the situation was severe and, certainly, highly visual and full of human drama on the most profound level.
COHEN: Photographer Anthony Suau took home the World Press Photo's top prize this week. We'll hear more about his work later in the program. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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